


Of Memories and Dreams

by FunWhileItLasts



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-02 23:31:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10230407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunWhileItLasts/pseuds/FunWhileItLasts
Summary: Andrew hates having an eidetic memory just as much as he hates having an imagination.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is just angst guys im really sorry.  
> unbeta's so feel free to point out any errors

Andrew doesn’t sleep most nights. When he does, it is an immediate fall into the darkest of caverns with no safety net. His eyes close without his permission and his exhausted brain thinks ‘not again’. 

He fights it, most nights, with books, cigarettes, or watching Kevin run around the court, with Neil at his heels, every bit the maniac he tries not to be. 

He fights it, because to fear is to lose control. 

Fear is, in itself, irrational. It shuts down the brain and turns on the body. 

That is dangerous; when you lose your logic and reasoning, your body can only act on instinct.

It took an age to train instinct into his body, mornings of flexing his fingers around his knives when he wakes up, days of sparring and strength building, nights of sleeplessness and nothing-at-all. 

He can’t allow the fear that comes with his dreams. 

They’re not dreams, Bee would say, they’re nightmares. 

Bee is wrong. 

They’re memories. 

Sometimes they’re about Drake, creeping into his room. He used to step over the creaky floorboard so Cas didn’t wake up to check on Andrew. By the time she got there, Drake would have already had him face down on the mattress with his legs forced open around meaty thighs. When Andrew wakes up, its quick, with a hammering heart, and phantom pains that ransack his mind of clarity.

Sometimes they’re about watching the washing machine tumble his bedding. It goes round and round and Andrew follows it like a cat. With each circle a little bit of evidence is pulled away from him, with each circle it’s as if nothing happened, with each circle it feels less real. Andrew follows each circle and he feels less real. When he wakes up he has to trace every scar on his arms and thighs to remind himself of the times he tried so hard to be real.

Sometimes they’re about his first few homes, where nobody touched him and nobody cared. It hollows him out until he is nothing but a mound of skin and hair and when he wakes up it takes him a while to feel like he has bones again. The empty weight in his stomach never leaves him though, an echo of weeks without food or touch or acknowledgement. 

Sometimes they’re about Cas’ home. He was used to the cruelty of adults. He knew they didn’t care, maybe they were incapable. He knew they used him to get money, and, beyond keeping him alive, they gave him no help. His new home was strange, to say the least, because here he was subjected to a different kind of cruelty. It was ignorance, plain and simple. For every smile he got from Cas, he got a bruise from her son, and Andrew knew she would never believe him. Drake, as a masquerading older brother, had taught Andrew many things, but, mainly, he taught Andrew how to lie. And when he wakes up, Andrew knows he has never stopped lying. He lied so much, he must’ve become one, somewhere along the way.

 

Although, more frequently these days, when he sleeps with Neil beside him, they are actually dreams. And they are so soft Andrew thinks his chest hurts when he recalls them the next morning. He thinks it hurts; he's not sure what it should feel like anymore. 

It’s Neil, with his head in Andrew’s lap, curled up together on the back of the Foxes’ bus. In his dreams, Andrew would run his hands through the auburn curls and trace the scars on Neil’s face with his fingertips. He would kiss those pouting lips until he can replace every cry Neil ever made with a moan. He would bring Neil’s abusers to their knees and made them beg for death, before slowly granting them mercy. In reality, Andrew can’t stand the thought of Neil’s head by his crotch, and doubts Neil would appreciate Andrew touching his scars anyway.

It’s Nicky and Aaron, making dumbass jibes at each other endlessly, and they’re not afraid to include Andrew in the conversation. Aaron would thank him for all that he did to protect a stranger, to keep him out of a bed he didn’t belong in. Andrew would thank Nicky for all that he did to support Andrew’s unsupportable actions. A light-hearted and easy conversation could flow between them, like how Neil tells him family should act with each other, though only God knows how the little shit thinks he can take the high road with familiar relations. In reality, Nicky wouldn’t say anything to anger Andrew, and Aaron wouldn’t say anything to Andrew at all, and Andrew would not want them to. 

It’s Cas, being kind and thoughtful. She smiles every time Andrew speaks and he thinks it is beautiful, so he talks endlessly. She gives him warm food that she spent time preparing. She gives him loose hugs when she realises he doesn’t like to be squeezed. She gives him a home, and a mother, and she decides to open her eyes and chose Andrew. In reality, he can remember that Cas loves a paedophile more than him, so surely he is below them on the morality scale that people conform to.

 

It is wishing for something more, in those milliseconds of waking up before he can pull himself together, and wishing he hadn’t burnt those bridges.

He knows it’s another weakness, for which he should hate himself. Except, he can’t feel much when he’s awake, so he can’t truly hate himself the way he knows he should be capable of doing. 

It’s another reason Andrew knows he is broken. 

Andrew doesn’t sleep most nights.

Nicky, in the next bed over, sleeps like a baby. Andrew wonders if Nicky knows he doesn’t sleep, maybe Nicky thinks he’s an early bird, always awake before him. Andrew wonders if Nicky knows, and that makes him wonder if Nicky cares. 

Andrew thinks Nicky would care, but then Andrew knows he doesn’t care if Nicky cares. It’s just a thought, to occupy the time between his cousin’s snores and Andrew’s slow blinks


End file.
